I love, love, love Piemontese cheese. But agreed on the Castelmagno…. I’ve yet to find a good one on this side of the ocean. However, I did find a nice cheese recently at the Central Market in San Antonio: Bonrus from the Caseificio dell’Alta Langa Company. It’s a mixed milk, so creamy, bloomy, and if I close my eyes, I can see happy cows and sheep grazing on that perfumey, green grass of the Langhe! Also the Cravanzina and Rocchetta are very good, but the Bonrus was a tender little surprise. I found bliss the other night all by myself with this cheese and a nice Pinot Nero/Barbera blend from Marchesi Incisa della Rocchetta.

The blueberry pie looks delicious, and tradition is what it’s all about on birthdays and holidays. On the wine side, I think Paso Robles cabs when it comes to blueberry pie.

Congratulations you two….your happiness inspires!

@aw you’re entirely right that that attitude predates the Mao board. And you’re right, too, that it’s facile to generalize about the Parker-universe. I recently had an exchange about this very subject from a writer whose opinion, skill, and palate I admire greatly and you did the right thing to remind me not to so easily fall back into that bad habit. :-) Looking forward to seeing you next month and drinking something great together!

@tracie b thanks for the delicious pie, my lovely lady! Just when I ALREADY felt like the luckiest guy in the world… :-)

one question and some comments.

is it really correct to say that it’s squires/parker disciples who scream infanticide? in my experience, this kind of attitude predates parker, and in fact most people i know who are against drinking “vins de garde” in their youth are old-schoolers who have had the opportunity to cellar and/or taste many older wines and chart their development. most of these people (the ones i know personally) are not point-chasers or lovers of the kind of wines parker has been criticized for espousing; in fact, in my experience, these people tend to be anti-parker types and non-wine-board-members.

while i certainly have zero interest in defending parker or squires, as far as parker is concerned, specifically, i do feel sometimes that he is singled-out for having viewpoints that he probably doesn’t have. to take the example from your blog, i actually think he would have no problem with you quaffing that beautiful ten-year-old barbaresco if that’s how you’d want to spend your anniversary!

as for me, i’m long gone from the squires board… it’s been around 5 years since i realized that spending any time posting there was not how i wanted to spend any of my time… and it’s probably been longer since i happily let my WA subscription lapse. you probably have sensed from our limited interactions that for me, wine is “at its peak” when it serves as a route to one’s best experiencing of oneself in the context of some of the things in life that matter most. though opinions differ regarding what matters, i’m certain not one of these things is a score, or anybody ‘s opinion about what we should be drinking and when.

and finally, if you wanted blueberry pie, i could have recommended some wonderful parkerized OZ shiraz and CA syrahs and zins! it would have been no more work for tracie b than the pulling of a cork, or even the unscrewing of a cap! (if she put in all that work, she must really love you!)

peace,
aw